Jumping Ship from the Lily's Pad

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

On Saturday night I was catching up on reading DTCL and came across a post from terri_testing about why so few people claim James and Lily as friends. (posted 8/6/12, in reply to “Lupin’s ‘Resignation’,” by danajsparks) Part of it reads: 

What did happen to those witch friends Lily had in fifth year, the ones who couldn't understand why she even talked to Severus, the ones she sat and chatted with after the DADA OWL? Did their jealousy over the Mudblood scooping the Head Girl position (and the most eligible Pureblood bachelor) separate them? Were they naturally driven apart by diverging life paths caused by Lily's extremely early settling into marriage and motherhood while her friends all pursued careers....? 

Or there's always the solution I proposed in my abusive!James fic "Liberacorpus," that James had taken the precaution of sleeping his way through all of Lily's friends, so as to alienate them from her.... 

This got me to thinking: Maybe Lily’s friends were alienated, not by her good fortune or by James, but by Lily herself. I see two possibilities, both of which reflect badly on her and which are not mutually exclusive:

1) It’s certainly possible Lily’s friends were jealous because she got to be Head Girl and caught Big Wizard on Campus James. But under normal circumstances, friends get over such things. 

At least, they would have unless Lily rubbed their faces in her triumphs. If she bragged about how lucky she was, or how her success was proof of her greatness, particularly since she was a latecomer to the wizarding world, that would alienate anyone who wasn’t a complete doormat.

Of course, there is no proof Lily did that. But this kind of behavior accords with the assertion some people, most notably marionros, have made about Lily’s being a narcissist. Narcissists love to brag about themselves anyway (think Dumbledore in King’s Cross), and a triumphant narcissist would be worse than normal.

Such boasting is also compatible with the behaviors we see from Lily that indicate she had a poor character. For example, she was somewhat contemptuous and superior towards Severus, such as when she ordered him around, dismissed his feelings and concerns, or automatically took other people’s versions of events over his. 

She also exhibited a sadistic streak by using her magic to scare and torment Petunia. This is the moral equivalent of having your friends hold somebody while you punch them, or shoving over someone in a wheelchair, then laughing when they can’t get up.

No wonder she walked off and left her “best friend” to be attacked. She was doing the same thing outside of school herself, and to her own sister, who could not fight back. Which brings me to my next point. 

2) The other possibility for why Lily’s friendships ended may impart to her schoolmates a level of perspicacity they didn’t possess, but it’s an interesting idea anyway.

Lily may have bragged to or joked with her friends about using her magic to torment Petunia. I would never want to be friends with a person who was debased enough to attack her own family for entertainment.  

Regarding Severus, while Lily’s friends were no doubt happy to see her dump the greasy Slytherin, they may not have liked the way she did it. Initially, they just would have been happy he was gone, but over time, they may have become uncomfortable with her actions.

This was a boy Lily had known for six years, since she was nine. Her friends may have known she’d told Severus they were “best friends.” She had refused to break off their friendship for years, despite pressure from her House to dump him.

Then one day, he slipped up and insulted her while under extreme stress. And that was it. She literally turned her back on him and left him while he was helpless, to be assaulted by a ruthless gang of thugs. 

Severus didn’t just apologize for insulting her. He actually groveled to her, begging her forgiveness, risking his safety in the process. (Every time I think about this scene, I hear the Temptations singing, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”) Yet she refused to even accept his apology, let alone have anything to do with him again.

If Lily was a prefect, her behavior was even worse. Regardless of her feelings for the victim, it was her duty to protect someone from being assaulted, especially by a group of attackers. She failed to do the job she’d been chosen for, to live up the obligation she’d accepted. This makes her nothing but a prettier, spunkier version of Remus the Spineless because they both allowed their personal feelings to prevent them from doing their duty.

I can’t help comparing Lily and Remus as prefects with the black American soldiers who served in World War II. These men fought and died for their country, even though they had been the victims of vicious racism at home and knew they would be again once the war was over. They realized many of the people they were fighting for were disgusting bigots who didn’t consider them fully human. They usually weren’t even allowed to serve in the same units as white soldiers. Many of them were only a few years older than Lily and Remus. Yet despite all that, they put their sense of duty ahead of their personal feelings and risked their lives for all Americans, regardless of how loathsome many individuals were. That is why they are now considered groundbreaking heroes. 

Imagine having Lily as a comrade in the Order. You will go into battle with her and trust her with your life. You’ll expect her to have your back, no matter what. 

What if you say or do something wrong while under pressure? How do you know that, when you need her the most, she won’t turn her back on you, too, and leave you at the mercy of your enemies? If she could do that to someone she’d been friends with almost half her life, why wouldn’t she do it to you as well?

Would you trust someone like that in battle?

I wouldn’t. 

  

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I don't swear in general, but I especially try to avoid gendered swears. Seriously, is it just that hard to pick a non-gendered insult to describe what you're trying to say? Call him a "coward," a "weakling," a "doormat," etc. You don't have to reach for the insult that implicitly shames women.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

While agreeing in general, I have to point out in Petunia's defence that she does apparently have a friend called Yvonne. Yvonne is on holiday in Majorca when Mrs Figg breaks her leg, meaning that she can't mind Harry and he has to accompany the Dursleys to the zoo.

[sunnyskywalker]

Well, given how clueless wizards are about psychological trauma, I can't see turning teacups into rats being a big deal to them even if it is your sister's teacup. Transfiguring her into a rat, sure, but just changing an object in front of her for a bit of a scare? Nah. It has no physical effect, and there's no drunken mob threatening physical violence later, so what's the harm?

I think I could get over a Lily who was merely fickle or shallow. That would just be disappointing. But fickleness or shallowness as a motivation to passively support four-on-one waterboarding? That's just horrifying.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit late jumping in here - however, I think there is also the possibility that her girlfriends abandoned her for her own nasty habits. We see repeatedly that when Lily feels she has been attacked she can get quite nasty and go for the spot that hurts the most.

We watch her do so to Petunia while waiting for the Hogwarts Express - telling her she knows about Petunia's letter to Dumbledore. And we see that repeated in SWM after Snape insults her with Mudblood - she responds with not just 'Snivelous' but also the comment about his 'greyed' undershorts (in other words about his poverty, she knows darn well they are old because he can't afford better)

I therefore wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if she didn't end up alienating her other friends at some point as well.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

And just THINK how Snape might take this with the knowledge we now have that he KNEW Petunia and she highly disliked him! I cannot imagine (now that we know about their childhoods) that Snape would NOT think Petunia had been bad-mouthing Snape for years to Harry - possibly with family photos, so Harry would recognize him. WE know this didn't happen, but I can certainly imagine Snape would believe it did.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Oh, certainly he'd believe/suspect it. And given what he knew of Petunia's history (the letter and desire to go to Hogwarts), I don't think he'd necessarily imagine that Petunia might treat Harry badly *because of his magic*. But yeah, seeing that expression directed at him by Harry combined with his suspicions about Petunia bad-mouthing him he'd be primed to think that Harry came in hating him - ironically.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

“First, as you say, Severus' slur was inexcusable and, IMO, cannot be explained by him being under a lot of pressure. Pressure and humiliation tends to bring your defences down, meaning you cannot controll yourself from saying things you normally wouldn't say. It doesn't MAKE you say things you don't think. So - in Lily's stead, I think I would have ended our friendship as well - not because I couldn't believe in Severus saying he was sorry for it (I'm sure Lily did - there is no indication she was daft, after all), but because of the reason behind him using this slur. Just as I wouldn't want to be friends with a man who believed women in general to be some sort of pet or piece of meat to use - no matter if he treated ME differently.”

I think Severus’ humiliation did bring his defences down, but not it the sense of making him express secret long-held racist views. Rather, people who’ve just been humiliated often lash out at others to try and regain some of their lost status. What grounds did Snape have for trying to increase his status? None with regards the talented, handsome, male, pure-blooded Marauders. With regards to Lily, there are two potential things which would give Snape higher status than her in wizarding society. One is sex: Snape is male, Lilly female, but we don’t know just how big a difference this would make (JK Rowling once said that the WW was always more feminist than the muggle, because magic acted as an equaliser between the sexes, but we don’t really see much evidence of this in the books, so oh dear, consistency). The other is blood status: Snape is a halfblood, Lilly a muggleborn, which would probably raise his relative status at least a little. So yes, I agree that “a filthy little Mudblood like her” (or whatever it was) was meant to recall the racist aspects of wizarding society, but whilst it might indicate that Severus personally was prejudiced against muggle-borns, it is possible to make a case that he was just looking for anything to make himself look like less of a loser to the onlookers.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

“No close female friends, no close biological sisters, except for the 2-dimensional almost cartoonish Parvatis and the dysfunctional Blacks.

But in Jo's HP universe we are not only faced with the question regarding the absence of close friendships amongst contemporaries of the "Marauder Era", but also the question of why, by Harry's era, there is a decidedly strange lack of any large extended families spanning generations. For a population where living to over 100 years of age is not unusual, why are there no grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts and uncles, etc.?”

I think this might be largely due to the fact that JKR seems to have been much more interested in telling her story than she was in making a consistent and believable world. So, for example, the grandparents etc. of Harry and his friends weren’t really relevant for the story she wanted to tell, so she didn’t bother to write any. Similarly, in Harry’s parents’ generation, the only relevant characters were the Marauders, Lilly, and Severus, so they’re the only characters she really writes about, and their other friends don’t get more than a brief mention. The plot only requires a small number of teachers, so Hogwarts has a small number of teachers, even though they wouldn't in reality have enough time to teach a school as large as Hogwarts is supposed to be. And so on.

[oryx_leucoryx]

What makes me really angry is when people use female-related terms to insult men

... and then use that as an excuse to claim that 'bitch' or whichever word isn't a sexist term anymore because it is used for men too .... Yeah, right!

[oryx_leucoryx]

Molly makes one explicit mention of some unnamed friends in HBP, when she says none of her friends has a clock like hers, so she doesn't know if her clock showing the entire family being in 'mortal danger' is something specific to them (presumably because of their involvement with the Order and Harry) or general to the wizarding population. She also mentions that 'everyone' was eloping around the time she and Arthur did - this may have been a reference to some friends of theirs - whether hers or Arthur's we do not know.

Petunia's most common interaction with her neighbors seems to be that of constant one-upmanship - she has to spy on them to know where she stands relative to them, and she has to let them know how well she is doing (recall loud admiration of the company car that Vernon got to use).

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Hey!

Don't diss Cissy like that!

She clearly demonstrated, that if push ever came to shove, she'd place her child's well-being above ANY policy her husband thought to enact, or any leader her husband chose to follow.

Not anything that whassername has had the gumption to establish.

They are both rich girls who'd never had cause to question their privilege, no more (at this point) than that.

So give whassername a chance to establish she's as morally good as a random Malfoy.....

[oryx_leucoryx]

I replied elsewhere in this thread about what canon says about Molly's social life.

Hermione and Ginny (yes, connected via Ron and Harry) sometimes appear to have some kind of friendship - especially in parts of GOF (when Ginny was still in v1.0). Maybe Ginny's (v2.0) revelation (in HBP) of Hermione's snogging with Viktor really did hurt Hermione's feelings and caused that friendship to freeze over.

As to why Rowling does this - a combination of several things: Rowling appears to be a 'chill girl' - she displays much of the internalized misogyny that characterizes this type. At the very least, she finds anything to do with girls and women unappealing so she just keeps one female character of each type and keeps interactions between them to the minimum required by the plot. Rowling writes from the POV of a boy who is late to develop an interest in the opposite sex - and doesn't do much world building beyond what he needs to know for the purpose of the plot. And despite the impression she gave in the early books, Rowling hardly knows what goes on in her world when Harry isn't looking.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

An interesting way of looking at it. I could also see him using it, not because he secretly thinks it, but (subconsciously) precisely because of its hurtful power to Lily specifically. (That is, its not the meaning of the word itself that leads him to use it but the fact that she specifically will feel hurt by it. If being called a self involved cow would have been particularly bad to her he would have used that, etc. It's like her jab at his poverty - it's using knowledge of a personal point of particular vulnerability as retaliation.) He feels helpless, he is humiliated, but he is also IMHO angry at her specifically for flirting with James and using him like a prop, etc. He feels deeply hurt by *her* - but given their dynamic he doesn't feel able to consciously acknowledge it fully or feel that he has a right to be angry at her. So instead he subconsciously goes for something that will let him express those feelings in the moment, in a way that will let Lily know that *she* too has hurt him, but later genuinely regrets having tried to hurt her because he does care about her. I could see this coinciding with the status aspect too, and with feeling a need to defend his 'manhood' in front of James et al.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I'm even later here, but I really can't understand why Lily is seen as a likeable character by the fanbase. The fact that she seems to both enjoy being a bully and being around other bullies makes me lose all sympathy for her. Especially her cruelty to Petunia. Petunia may not be a very nice person as an adult, but I can sure see why she would have such hatred for anything connected to her narcissistic monster of a sister.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Of course, if Petunia had found some way to defend herself, such as pulling a knife on her or something, it would mean that she's a terrible, terrible person who just can't appreciate Lily's awesomeness.

I swear, I think the thing that I hate the most about this series is that the author refuses to let her readers decide who the good and bad guys are. She plays favorites in a way pretty similar to Petunia and Dudley, actually.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I think it's both ridiculous and racist

I know I am not the first to say it, but I wonder if JKR ever realized how similar that word is to a terrible real-world racial slur? Maybe it doesn't come up as much in the UK?

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Wow, good call. I'm kind of amazed that I never noticed this before.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Of course, if Petunia had found some way to defend herself, such as pulling a knife on her or something, it would mean that she's a terrible, terrible person who just can't appreciate Lily's awesomeness.

Oh, I love that idea! It's too bad they have such strict gun laws in the UK (for dramatic purposes, of course, not RL purposes). I can just imagine Petunia pulling out a 9 MM and snarling, "Hex this, MF!" Blam, blam, blam, blam! There goes Lily and Harry.

Of course, Severus would probably come after Petunia then, and get killed, too. But at least he wouldn't be wasting his life pining after somebody who didn't care about him.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Am I a terrible person that this made me laugh hysterically?

At the very least, it would teach the WW not to underestimate firearms as much as they seem to.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

No, it just means you're terribly disgusted with the illogic and one-sidedness of these books. As for guns, you can bet American magicals don't dismiss guns the way British magicals do. Not with all those news reports of people being shot, either accidentally or on purpose.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Before I read these books, I deliberately ignored everything about them as much as possible--media reports, online fora, anything. To this day, I've never seen the movies. I waited until the entire series had been finished for almost 2 years before I read it. I did all that so I could come to the books with the most open-minded and unprejudiced attitude possible.

I started out having neutral feelings for Lily, but the more and closer I look at her, the worse she looks. I can't help that. That's just what's on the page. She and her ilk behave just as badly as the "bad" characters, such as Snape and Petunia, but we're supposed to look at the "good" characters' jerkiness and pretend it's not really jerkiness because "good" characters are doing it. Judging behavior is all purely arbitrary, based on the author's personal preferences, and the readers are supposed to mindlessly go along with that double standard just because the author says so. "Because I say so" may work with toddlers, but it shouldn't work with adults.

What's so sad about this fandom is that it does work with so many fans. We've all seen canon whores wailing, for example, "The Death Eaters are so as bad as Nazis! It says so right in the books!"

Who are you gonna believe, JKR or your lying eyes? The answer to that question is what separates the fans who are mental and emotional adults from the ones, no matter their age, who are still mental and emotional children.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Then there's his attitude about strapping his dog on the top of the family car and driving at highway speeds.

For 12 hours, no less! And Mrs. Creepy treated that like a joke, insisting their dog "loved it." Devo has a new song out about that called, "Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro." There are also websites, dogsagainstromney.com, and rememberseamus.com. You can buy bumper stickers and T-shirts at both sites. There's also a book called, Dog on the Roof: On the Road with Mitt and the Mutt.

BTW, I didn't mean to suggest I thought Romney should have been expelled for attacking a teacher but not a student. I was just acknowledging that in the 1960s, attacking another student like that wouldn't have been considered a big deal.

Re all the bullying, it's completely unbelievable that he is the only one who doesn't remember it. I looked up the Washington Post article that started the controversy and read the whole thing. I don't understand why a teacher with vision that bad was allowed to have a driver's license.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

What's so sad about this fandom is that it does work with so many fans. We've all seen canon whores wailing, for example, "The Death Eaters are so as bad as Nazis! It says so right in the books!"

What bothers me more is when the people who are doing this really ought to know better. I know quite a few very intelligent people, some of whom actually have a background in literature, who nonetheless tend to believe everything JKR says, even if it directly contradicts what's actually written in the books. Of course, I can't be too hard on them, as I was kind of like that myself a few years ago. The difference is that I finally stopped ignoring the things about the series that had always bugged me a little, rather than blithely accepting them as part of JKR's perfect master plan.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I think that the thing about Romney that bothers me is not that he did those things, but that he refuses to feel remorse for doing so, or even remember what he did. I was a bully sometimes when I was growing up (in the hopes that it would deflect some of the bullying I myself got), but I remember it vividly and am incredibly embarrassed by how cruel I could be. How one could forget doing the kinds of things that Romney's classmates remembered him doing is beyond me.

(Generally I try not to get into politics, but I felt like I ought to give my two cents)

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

You know, this is why I don't buy Hagrid's explanation of why the WW has to be kept a secret from Muggles. A more likely reason I can think of is fear. Sure, wizards can wave their wands around and make cool stuff happen, but as far as raw, wholesale slaughter, the Muggles have them beat by far. Not only is their warfare technology far superior, but the sheer numbers alone ought to make wizards worry. When secrecy is the only thing that's keeping you from potentially being slaughtered or turned into a military experiment, I can see wizards wanting to be cut off from the rest of the world. What I can't see, though, is this haughty, half-*ssed attempt at concealment. "Now, remember, we don't want these stupid and inferior Muggles catching onto us, but it's OK to go around speaking openly about magic and dressing in the most conspicuous way possible, tehe!"